Fundraising is never easy (or fun) but it’s significantly harder for first time founders for a few reasons:
- Minimal Network – First time founders don’t know or have access to many investors. Relative to other types of jobs, investors are rare. As a result, people are constantly trying to contact them so they learn to guard their time carefully. Unless you’ve been introduced to them through someone they know, it’s tough to get their attention.
- Bad Pitch – Since they don’t know many investors, first time founders don’t know what investors care about. Often their pitches accentuate the wrong things and deemphasize (or omit completely) the right things.
- Timing – There’s no clear rules on when you should fundraise. It depends on the type of business, your space, your traction, etc. Often we see companies fundraising too early when they should be spending all their energy on traction.
To be clear, none of this is the fault of the founders. They’re things you learn along the way, often through trial and error, and lots of looking dumb. Brian and I were the same way when we started.
We might have a hack. We’ve spent the past 13 years fundraising for our own companies and in the process getting to know 200+ investors. Now we want to make our network and learnings accessible to anyone. We’re calling it Iterative Connect.
Here’s how it works.
- Apply to Iterative Connect – Fill out a quick form to tell us about your startup.
- We Review Application – 10 startups will be chosen. Each startup will get 1:1 pitch feedback from an Iterative General Partner.
- We Share Your Startup with 200+ Investors – We will personally share the 10 startups selected with our network of 200+ investors.
- We Connect You with Interested Investors – If an investor is interested in learning more about your startup, we’ll make a personal introduction.
To get started, go to connect.iterative.com and fill out a short application. We’ll select the first batch of companies at the end of this month.
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